Articles for therapists and counsellor about CBT - Cognitive Therapy. These posts are intended to help the beginning CBT practitioner and also provide food for thought for experienced cognitive therapists. Provided by UKCP Central London therapist and accredited CBT practitioner and supervisor Tim LeBon.

Saturday, 3 October 2009

There are a wealth of measurements available in CBT, such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), but most are copyrighted (ie you have to pay for them). Furthermore many of them take a long time to complete, which means you might only want to administer them once a month or so.

Whilst it is worth getting hold of and using these measures, you and your clients might also benefit from using two quick to use and free measures that are currently used in the IAPT services in the UK.
These are the GAD-7 (for anxiety) and PHQ-9 (for depression)

You can find the measures and guides to using them here
They take a couple of minutes to administer so, when appropriate, can be used every week as a quick gauge of where clients are at and also a measure of progress.